When I first heard of a new application called Scrivener, I was immediately …

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The first thing you need to know about Scrivener is that it isn't a page layout program. You wouldn't use this product instead of InDesign, QuarkXpress or Scribus. This application is a utility for writers, a utility offering features that no simple word processor can offer. Scrivener is a suite of applications all rolled up into one. It is an outliner, a piece of mind-mapping software, a powerful word processor. Its goal? To make managing a large project maintainable by hosting all the necessary tools in one application.

To do a thorough job reviewing this application, I would need to use thousands upon thousands of words just to touch briefly on most of its features. Frankly, I don't have that kind of time or attention span. Instead, I am going to take you through my own academic writing process [1].

When I was writing research papers on a regular basis during the pursuit of my undergraduate degree, after securing my sources, my process went something like this:

Write an outline regarding what topics and questions I want to discuss and answer during the body of my paper.

Take detailed notes on aforementioned topics and questions on 3"x5" ruled note cards. Each note card is given a number which corresponds to which source it came from. Source cards are made before this step on their own note cards.

Notes are organized using different color highlighters. Each topic or question is assigned a color and has a corner marked with that color. Notes are then separated into piles by highlighter color.

Organize notes cards in logical order of when they should be discussed in paper, destroying any duplicates or information that will be unused. Piles are then paper clipped together and numbered in pencil from one until the last card is reached.

Rough draft begins using note cards as a guide and source cards as a citation guide.

Editing process (generally exceedingly long and painful).

Final draft.

Some of you might think this slaving over note cards a bit old-fashioned, but alas this is the way I was taught all those years ago in elementary school and it works for me, so I have stuck with it.

So here it begins; let me lead you through this process using Scrivener.

Outlining

The outlining portion of Scrivener is my least favorite part. However, in its defense, I am an OmniOutliner user, so am used to some pretty powerful outlining tools. The first thing I realized about the outliner was that it can only do one-level outlining; you can't have something like this for instance:

Topic

Sub-Topic

This lack of sub-topic functionality is incorrect. I had somehow overlooked this application's functionality during my minireview process. Thank you for everyone for pointing this out.

While not great, this isn't a game-breaker for me. Each outline point is linked to the draft of that section where you actually write about the topic. In outline mode you can quickly look at any labels you have applied to a bullet such as "chapter," and you can also view things like word count for each section, date last modified, or the current status of the section. While perhaps not the powerful outlining tool you might be used to, it seems adequate for most tasks. For my purposes, I label each topic with a color, so that I can later apply the same color to corresponding research note cards.

Note Cards

One of the initial features that attracted me to Scrivener was the "Corkboard" feature. The Corkboard is basically an area where you can organize thoughts, take notes, or just visualize your writing in a different way. It looks like any other cork or tack board and note cards are virtually pinned with virtual tacks. You can name each note card [2] and create a short synopsis of the card that is readable when viewing the Corkboard. You can select the card via the binder [3] and add as much or as little text as you like into each card. I prefer short notes, so one note per card works just spiffy for me. You can even include images and videos on your Corkboard. Here are some of my notes; aren't they pretty? To aid in the note-taking process, especially from digital sources, Scrivener provides a "Scratch Pad" that you can set to always float on top of a current window so you can take notes as you read your online article, then easily append it to any section you want with a push of a button.

Organizing Note Cards

Now comes my favorite part of the process: organizing note cards time! There is nothing quite like dumping all of your note cards out on the floor in front of you and picking them up one at a time and classifying them into a pre-determined category using highlighters. Good times! [4] So will doing this virtually be quite as rewarding as it is in real life?

I set a color label to each outline category, so I can now go through my note cards and label them likewise. At first I thought that ideally the entire note card would take on the hue of that label, but instead the tack and the corner of the note card are marked with the color, almost like my real life highlighting—uncanny.

After I'm done playing with my note cards and marking them up in different pretty colors I organize them. This is really simple to do; all it takes is a few drag and drops. So here is where I ran into a problem. As you might remember, after color coding and separating my notes I then sort them into the order that they are going to be discussed in my paper. Since Scrivener's view is three notes across, this just doesn't work for me visually. It really isn't a problem, though, because you can, by right clicking, set how many note cards you want displayed horizontally. After I sorted by chronological order, I set Cards Across to "1" and was ready to finally start writing!

Rough Draft

So now I am ready to write my first draft, but there is another problem: when I used to write these sorts of papers I would prop my note cards up next to my computer and file through them as I wrote. Now that I don't have any physical note cards what is a writer to do? Luckily, the author of this piece of software has us covered on this as well. By hitting one button in the UI, I can easily split the screen so that my writing is on top,and my note cards are on the bottom. I can then scroll through my note cards as I write. Perhaps for a future version, a means of going through note cards as you type without touching the mouse would be helpful.

When it comes to formatting your rough draft, Scrivener has everything you would expect and it's very simple to use annotation and footnote tools. Of course, as you have probably noticed, the outlining portion discussed earlier makes it very easy to split your rough draft into sections. As in any halfway decent OS X app, spelling is of course checked as you type.

Additionaly, although not unique to Scrivener, you have the increasingly popular "Full Screen Mode." Unlike some other applications that totally black out all things that lie behind it, Scivener defaults to a semi-translucent black background to ward off distractions. You can, however, set the background to a solid color, or make the page fill the screen. Full screen mode is easily toggled out of by pressing the escape key. Add in auto completion and you are approaching a world of Writer's Zen.

Editing

I may be alone here, but I think one of Microsoft Word's more redeeming qualities is its Track Changes mode. This is simply a mode in which any text deleted is crossed out in red, rather then leaving the screen completely, and any new text is added in green. This mode makes it extremely easy to see where changes have been made by yourself and others. Scrivener doesn't have that functionality. What it does have is the basic "Highlight" function, where you, as the name implies, select text and make the background a different color. The lack of being able to track changes through this method is redeemed somewhat by the ability to take "Snapshots." Sanpshots allow you to create a visual text clipping of your work that you can always revert back to in case you decide your edit is awful, or that your editor is on crack. Although Snapshots does not show you the changes between the two documents, at least you can compare and contrast and figure out what changes were made. You also have the standard find and replace dialogs you find in most text editors.

Final Draft

This section is less about the process of making the final draft and more about what you do with it. While Scrivener's text looks beautiful on the screen, beauty on the screen does not always translate to beauty on the paper, or someone else's screen. Luckily you have many different ways in which to export, HTML, RTF, Plain Text or through MultiMarkDown Language, which I'm not even going to pretend to understand. You can also export to Latex or XHTML formats.

Conclusions

That was just one example of what this powerful application can do with the way one individual works. As I have stated previously, there are many more features I haven't touched upon or even tried yet. The moral of this story is that Scrivener is good Mac software. If you are a writer of any kind, you owe it to yourself to try it out. It may change your workflow, it may save you time, or you just may love it.

[1] It is important to understand that by academic writing process I mean writing papers for grades in undergraduate courses and not writing scholarly works for academic journals.

[2] This is where I put the source number; it seems like the best place since there is not a designated one.

[3] The binder is just a fancy way of saying "that tray-like thing to the right."

[4] No, seriously, good times. I enjoy doing this, is there something wrong with me?